As the number of COVID-19 patients discharged from intensive care units increases, medical experts are warning that extended stays in the ICU can have long lasting effects.
Dr. Sophia Wang is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Indiana University School of Medicine. She says the longer a patient remains in the ICU, the more likely they are to develop post intensive care syndrome or delirium.
She says stays of COVID-19 patients in the ICU are on average longer.
“For the patient this includes a constellation of symptoms, which are psychological, cognitive, and physical," she says. "And all of these symptoms can decrease the quality of life for the patient.”
Wang says delirium is a disturbance in cognition that can’t be attributed to pre-existing or already established neurocognitive disorders.
It’s estimated that more than 70 percent older people discharged from the ICU will develop delirium. Wang says the best way to spot symptoms is to speak with the patient's friends and family to get a baseline of a patient’s cognitive function before they were hospitalized.
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